The Orphan
by RedneckPlasticFlamingo
Summary: "As we all know, your father passed away on the day of the reaping recently. Would you mind elaborating?" Rue could feel the audience. They had their breaths bated, leaning forward hungrily in their chairs. "A Peacekeeper killed him," she told Caesar. The crowd burst in gasps and shrieks. But little did Rue know, her few words would cause Panem to break completely. (Pairings)


**A/N: This is a 74th Hunger Games AU story. To support the future pairing, Rue is older than she was in the books and Katniss plays a role much, much later. There's an odd mix of characters in here, but we've got Prim, Peeta, Foxface, and a few interesting OCs, so I think we'll be a-okay. I hope you like it. :)**

**Disclaimer: I only own my OCs.**

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**Chapter One: A Sprout**

The crowd of District 11 had fallen silent, as was typical when a name was drawn from either ball on the day of the Reaping. No whispers were uttered in the widespread silence. Not a step was taken nor a swathe of clothing ruffled by anyone other than the escort, Ema Lojeski, who was perched behind the podium in a sleeveless, silky pink dress with many silver flowers clinging around the middle to her thighs.

An adolescent child, Rue Arbor, stood among the sea of sweaty skin and her eyes gazed into the blossom of foliage from her spot among the other girls about her. Beams of sunlight sprinkled through trees in the distance and illuminated the empty ground. She listened for the chitter of squirrels and the mockingjays echoing them.

"Rue Arbor?" repeated the escort. Rue's fingertips clutched the hem of her dress. The day was too beautiful for a reaping, but Rue was naive in thinking for a moment that that was going to stop the Capitol. "Rue Arbor? Are you present?" Scanning the square with artificial silver eyes, the skin of the escort's neck was taut as she craned over the wooden podium.

But Rue didn't dare utter a word in response. From her sides, from behind and in front her stiffening figure, pitying glances were tossed her way, and the girl struggled to keep her eyes where they were, glued to the tattered leather sandals she had strapped over her feet. _'L__ord,'_ she prayed, and she closed her eyes for the briefest of moments as another girl's hand brushed against hers,_ 'this is a dream. Please.'_

But she wasn't going to allow herself to believe her own lie. Not when everything felt so real. Her fear was real. The bumps that rose on her ebony skin, the shivers that ran through her body in the heated breeze of day were more real than ever.

Again, Rue's eyelids fluttered shut, but longer this time, as the escort's artificial ones honed in on her shaking figure. "There she is, so _darling._" The escort's voice was silky and fused with Capitol undertones that could be spotted by any district citizen, poor or fairly wealthy, like those in One. The escort waved Rue over with a beaming smile on her face, and the jewels on her nails caught the District 11 sunlight with the movement, twinkling like a night sky in June. "Come on, dear. This is your only chance. You of all these_ marvelous_ girls have been chosen. Now come on up and introduce yourself. Come up." Without thinking on the words, Rue revealed her chestnut-brown eyes to the crowd, whose faces were all turned towards the center of the square where she stood timid and afraid. The escort turned over her naked shoulder and gave the mayor a laughing smile. "Look at the child, she can hardly believe it."

And Rue agreed. The truth was, she didn't _want_ to believe it, and she wasn't sure she wanted to meet anyone who could find the heart to blame her for it. She wanted to continue dancing across treetops and sauntering through orchards where she wouldn't have to worry about survival any more than she already had to. So she simply shook her head to fight out the cowardly thought she had to fight away from this reality.

Solemnly, children began to clear a path for Rue with their eyes focused on her stormy hair and ebony skin, the chestnut beads that watered with tears she struggled to hold back.

She gazed up the aisle her district had cleared for her and told herself she wasn't done for. She knew with certainty that she had a chance in whatever games the Capitol had for her because she could run, she was stealthy. She was a very quick thinker and could scale halfway up a tree before a sword could be lifted or a mace swung. She could gather, and was fairly small in stature. Maybe this wasn't fear so much as shock, or the fear would go away as soon as she started strategizing.

With controlled fingers, she gripped the hem of her worn jean dress, squeezing her eyes tightly shut one last time as she muttered to herself in a voice too soft to be a whisper, the words,_ "go. Rue, go."_ She pried them open again to the delicate faces of hundreds of girls, some of the faces soft and familiar, some of them befuddled and foreign. And then, one foot in front of the other, she took off. She pressed through thousands of children whose eyes peered into her gentle face with expressions of pity and sadness, even with the slightest disdain toward the Capitol if you looked close enough.

As Rue pushed on, she felt a single hand grab hers with delicate fingers, could feel the gentle press of words into her palm, words that said, _I'll remember you._ It was the briefest of moments, yet even when she slid her hand away, she could feel the meaning of the gesture set in to her mind, could feel it develop a grip on her throat that brought tears to rest on the edges of her eyes.

She willed her hands to stay by her sides as her tattered brown sandal met the first step of the Justice Building. Her eyes itched, a few tears brimming the chestnut pieces, but her face remained stony and thoughtful. She watched as the escort's pale hand reached down from the platform, and she didn't look into her silver eyes as she slid her fingers into a weak grip around the woman's icy hand. Instead, she let her gaze dart around the frozen square, let her eyes brush over the faces of the hundreds, _thousands_ of children who were searching their minds for memories of the girl who had been reaped. Some didn't know of her. Others were sure she had been the one who tutored them in English, or fed bread to the ducks at lunch who waddled by.

"Sweet Rue, our new tribute." The escort's voice was soft and smooth, like a purr that had been practiced and trained to sound sweet and youthful. The woman slid a thumb over the ebony skin of Rue's hand, the hand that trembled in fear. "How old are you, girl?" She asked the question with silver hollow eyes, her lips colored a naked shade of chrome as she spoke into a microphone that stood from the podium, erect among others.

"I'm sixteen years old," Rue told her. The girl was still peeling her eyes from the crowd of people, and had just met the escort's startling silver ones. She even managed to pull her lips into a smile as she said the words, but it was fearful, timid.

"Well, girl, you're a darling, I'll tell you _that._" The escort was folding Rue's slip into a delicate little slip, and dropped it so it settled high on the wood of the podium, inches from the microphones that stood erect behind it. "In all my years of escorting Eleven, it would take me awhile to think of someone with such potential as you, with your pretty eyes and kinky black hair." The woman brushed a delicate hand over the kinks of Rue's dark hair, pushing a few of the curls behind the girl's ear and smiling as she did so. To the falter of the escort's smile, not a single word was uttered in the square, nor did an expression twitch or quiver in agreement.

But Rue didn't need their agreement to know that she was beautiful. Looking up at the escort with timid brown eyes, she was just glad that someone, be it a Capitolite, was happy today. It wasn't often that you saw a smiling face on Reaping Day in 11. Actually, it wasn't often that you saw a smiling face elsewhere, either. Perhaps the Career districts showed elation when a cannon fired in the games, but Rue didn't feel like blaming Careers today. She was sure that at some time, be it long ago or just last year, a reaped Career child had a lot to lose. Perhaps the had child felt as bad as she did standing beside a painted woman on her way to certain death.

Death. Just the mention of such a word sent tear dribbling down Rue's ebony skin, a droplet of the salty water curving into the gentle hollow of her throat. She hoped it wasn't visible on camera, though the red blush of her face probably was, so she just closed her eyes. Admittedly, death was something Rue didn't much care to think about either.

She felt the escort give her hand a squeeze with gentle fingers, a squeeze that trapped her thoughts into her palm and sent her back into reality. Rue caught the woman's eyes, caught her beaming white smile and the young silver lips that curled around it. "—boys," said the woman, and the escort gave a hum of a ditzy old Capitol tune as she sauntered behind the podium with pink fabric heels that click-clacked against the concrete. She dipped her hand into a bowl of glass, filled to the edge with bright white slips of paper, and in a breathless moment, her manicured fingertips landed on a single slip of paper that was wedged somewhere in the middle of the bowl.

The woman's silver eyes seemed to beam at the anticipation in the square as she unfolded the slip with a light smile curving her lips. Somewhere in the back of Rue's mind, she was wondering where her father stood among the crowd. She imagined his tired body milling alone in Eleven's groves, spending the last of his years collecting berries from the bushes he'd helped Rue plant when she was little. And that thought sent a tinge of sadness into Rue's heart, because among many other duties, collecting berries was something Rue did. For the longest time, she would wrap small handfuls of the produce in waxy leaves, stuffing them into the pockets of her only pair of overalls so her father could make jam to spread over the tough, tasteless bread she'd trade seeds for in the black market. Those berries were the only thing besides his daughter that he loved more than he loved himself. The blue ones were his favorite, and oftentimes, that was a very dangerous thing. Nightlock berries were only a slightly darker shade of purple and would kill you an instant after ingestion.

The escort turned a slip of paper in her hands right-side-up, her silver pupils focusing on the tiny writing scrawled in pen across the dainty slip. Rue's mind flashed back to a boy, small, confident in his movements, with a gleaming white smile and a nose that crinkled when he laughed. She remembered finding him sitting upright against a tree in the orchards, a ways away from the most unfavorable of the three schools in District 11. In his lap had rested a book about the harvest, the leather torn and wrinkled, the pages mangled and worn. In his chubby fingers had been a damaged length of plastic with a ball point tip and an inch of ink running through the middle.

She had offered a hand with his work, and his 12-year-old body grew tense, his shoulders high and his eyes large in his young face. When she had lowered herself beside him for the first time, his fear had sunken away and was replaced by the largest of smiles, a gleaming white grin that Rue would learn to adore on her walks home from the classroom. After a while of timid calls from that particular tree, a few quiet walks through the forest, spotting birds and naming animals, these tutoring sessions had grown frequent. Rue had even begun the tradition of hiding berries from her bush to give him, and silently, with a quiet smile on his lips, he had enjoyed their sweet taste.

Therefore when the escort uttered his name, it came to Rue as a bit of a surprise. The woman spoke it with a quiet, level voice, and in Rue's mind, the name was almost welcome, like a cool breeze on a summer day. But it came with a pang of fear and hitched her breath high in her throat, just where she couldn't reach it to breathe. The escort repeated, "Grove Orris."

A familiar dark-skinned boy with a healthy face and wide, dark eyes perked to life in the third row of the crowd. He pursed his lips into a dark line, defining the dimples on either of his cheeks. His dark eyebrows were furrowed and he slid his hands, thick with baby fat, from his jean pockets as he turned his head for someone in the square to volunteer; anyone. He took a breath and locked eyes with the escort, with Rue, who was sobbing now as she peered past mats of kinky hair and teary red cheeks. She pawed at the wetness of her face with the backs of her hands and watched as the boy held himself high, weaving through the crowd in old velcro sneakers.

He was dressed in a tattered button-down shirt that hung just over his blue jeans, worn at the knees with rips and flyaway strings where his ankles were. The escort stepped away from the podium just as Grove emerged from the crowd. A sob unfamiliar to Rue echoed from far back in the square. The little boy stumbled over feet and his throat moved in a dry gulp the closer he got to the platform. Rue sniffed as Grove reached with a baby-skinned hand for the escort's grip, and as he took the first step, a gruff, manly yell echoed far on the right side of the square, towards the back. _"No! Grove!_ Don't—don't let them—"

A few grunts sounded when a group of Peacekeepers took the man's arms, holding him away from the platform as he struggled in their arms to move forward. "No," the man grunted. "Grove!" The little boy flinched away from the escort's hand, and his eyes were glued to the man as he took a good step back.

_"I volunteer!"_ The man blurted. His voice was thick, and true. The words echoed in the air, and the man breathed thick, exhausted breaths, his eyes tired and worried as he stared up at the escort's ghost-white face. The Peacekeepers released their grip on his arms, and he nearly slumped to the ground, but caught himself in a sturdy step. He repeated, "I volunteer as tribute."

A small crowd of children were turning to face the spectacle, and Grove gave a shake of his head, as if he just registered what the man had done. "No," he barked, and his shaking tossed a tear from his eye, because his face was wet and reddened just a moment after. He turned from the platform, reaching with his hands to wipe the tears from his eyes. A single Peacekeeper took the boy by the middle, restraining his feet with gloved hands. "Thresh," breathed the boy. His voice was young, and fearful, quavering with tears and dry with sadness._ "Thresh, no!"_ With dull nails, he clawed at the Peacekeeper's armor, writhing his legs in the metal grip and beating his fist on the soldier's back.

Thresh walked toward the platform, his shoulders tense and his brows furrowed as he turned over his shoulder to watch the boy and the Peacekeeper's retreating figures. "Grove, go find Verbena," choked the man with stern eyes at his brother. "Go find her, alright?"

As he was being carried further down the path, Grove opened his mouth for a small moment before choking down his words. Tears streamed down his young face and he tucked his chin into the crook of his elbow. And with that, as Thresh pursed his lips into a thin, dark line, Grove gave an obedient nod and fell silent.

The escort seemed to shrink under the shadow of Thresh's towering figure. Not even her pink fabric pumps could succeed in letting the woman look intimidating beside him. Strength radiated through Thresh's upright body, and the very first thing he did when he met Rue's watery eyes was let his gaze linger for a moment, as if judging her stature as she wiped away her drying tears with the backs of her hands. Then with dark eyes full with secrets, he glanced away.

"_Thresh_ Orris?" The escort asked of him. Her neck was bent and her eyes peered up at him, almost a sign of submission. Her light-brown eyebrows were furrowed in concern at the man, but Thresh kept his eyes on his feet, neglecting to respond. The woman looked taken aback with her silver lips parted and her eyes drawn wide. "That was your little brother, wasn't it?" Rue was sure the microphones weren't sensitive enough to pick up on her words. "My. How brave that was of you."

The hush was fiercely palpable in the air. No-one verbalized their thoughts, and that was most likely because they knew they were all in agreement. Through drowning eyes, Rue glanced at the armored back of the retreating Peacekeepers as they moved the small boy gap of silent people. Grove had tears still on his face, a dull gleam in his eyes as he looked after his older brother. The small boy's sounds of mourning were silent in the men's tight arms.

Rue watched as the boy was released into the arms a of an aging, strong woman. Her hair was shoulder-length, gray and frizzy in a tight ponytail behind her head. She wrapped her grandson in large, wrinkly arms and huffed whimpering sobs with her cheek to his shaved dark hair. The skin was loose, dark on her face, and her grandson's velcro sneakers nipped at the hem of her floral black dress. The crowd seemed to be watching her, now.

"Thresh." The escort seemed to have collected herself. She stood up straighter and folded her hands on the podium where the jewels on her nails were bright and visible. She glanced at her fingers for a brief second before lifting her nose at the man. "I'd like to know how old you are."

And Thresh glanced at her with cold eyes. Past the shadow of his tilted head, his full lips and wide nose were the only immediately visible features about him. You had to be as close as Rue was to really see past that. "Eighteen."

His voice was low and gruff. It piqued a sense of fear in Rue's mind, and she felt the urge to back away a foot, or to even step closer. Both ideas were awful to execute before Panem. Stepping away would show cowardice, and closer, stupidity. Rue decided that stepping closer would be the lesser of two evils. If anything, it would show nerve and daring. Stupid. Brave.

And without much carefulness, she stepped a foot forward so she could almost hear the man's shaking breaths. He raised his chin every-so-slightly and looked with beads into her eyes. His mouth moved to the sound of her name, and with a heave of his chest, he looked into the audience to find with watery eyes, the image of his brother in his grandma's arms. His back was straight and his chest strong. His lips trembled against the sadness. His tears didn't fall.

Rue wanted to doubt he'd ever cried, but common sense was thick in her mind. The escort made him shake her hand, made them turn to the square, where their fists were lifted to the sky. Thresh's hand was loose against Rue's sturdy palm. His fingers were leather pads under her timid digits. Between Eleven's tributes, there was a conversation to be had. It seemed as guaranteed as blood being spilt within the next few weeks of Rue's endangered life.

They separated hands. Guided into the Justice Building, the air grew warm and musty. The light was dim and the floors wooden, the walls a breathable color of autumn orange. Feet away, Thresh was ushered behind an open door, and though the escort didn't utter a sound in the building, Rue could hear the click of her heels as she stepped against the polished wooden ground.

A door was held ajar, and Rue was guided past its hinges by white gloved hands. As the door clicked shut with a quiet click, Rue's tears seemed frozen, stuck. A lamp flickered to life in a corner of the room, and Rue half expected Ceasar Flickerman to come sauntering out of the shadows with a grin on his face to let her know how funny it was when she thought she'd been reaped. Something like her body's attempt at a chuckle escaped her lips, and she felt the urge to hug her arms around her torso.

She knew the air was warm. She could feel it as it heated her bones and smothered her thickening breaths. But as she stood alone in the center of the foreign room, her body, her heart, really, felt as if it was completely frozen.

The creak of the door seemed to echo in the eerie silence. The figure of a Peacekeeper pushed the old bones of her father into the sizable room, and the light of the hallway revealed several other chairs hidden in the musty, quiet corners. "Reid Arbor," announced the man in the armor, and the briefest of moments ticked by before the door was eased shut.

The warmth of Reid's arms curled around his daughter's body, and Rue felt her fingertips curl into the dirty cotton as she shuddered breaths into his heated chest. She found herself counting each beat of his heart, tears threatening to spill from her eyelashes, and a deep, shuddering breath echoed in her lungs every moment the thumps paused inside his chest. She felt guilty, dim. "Daddy... I'm so sorry. I... I—"

Her father pulled her closer into his warmth, pressing his cheek over the top of her aching head. "Rue," he muttered to his daughter. She felt his lips as they moved against her temple with every word he spoke. "Rue...don't be silly."

Under the pressure of his head against hers, she nodded in the slightest. She could feel his tears as they trailed down her forehead, she marked their searing heat as they dribbled down her cheeks, her skinny neck. Her father pulled away, and as he gazed down at her with tired eyes, his smile was solemn, genuine.

Rue spoke with a small voice, the word, "Daddy." He looked at the tilted edges of her lips, the glassy reflection in her exhausted eyes. He could have sworn she was a shy-eyed, giggly twelve-year-old for a second time, but it was obvious that she wasn't. She was grown. Small, but grown. Reid felt his lips move into a smile as he brushed a tear from his daughter's smooth, dark skin. "You remember that rule I taught you?"

There was a twinkle in Rue's eye and a grin that shone through her solemn mein at her father's words. "Always ch—"

"—eck your harvest; that's right!" Echoed her father, and Rue's youthful giggle split the air as a grin twice as wide split her father's laughing face. "See, you'll be back," he smiled, bright and youthful at his daughter's eyes, and the smile on her face seemed to soften in that moment. "I wouldn't doubt for the world that you're going to win this."

There was a blush that crept over his daughter's cheeks at the immense amount of pride that shone in his expression. His words were firm, but quiet. Every syllable was infused with the most honest of emotions. Rue gazed at her father, her brown eyes wide and curious. "You'll always believe in me, daddy," she told him. The words escaped her throat like an impulse. "Won't you?" She finished. She didn't know where they came from, but they spoke true and bold in her soul. It was a question to which she needed an answer.

Her father took her into his arms, squeezing her, pressing a kiss to her forehead that lingered for the longest of whiles. His embrace was warm, engulfing, but a panic entered Rue's voice and she pushed on his chest with open, timid palms. _"Won't_ you?" She repeated. Her father's eyes grew squinted and concerned.

With a creak of the door a Peacekeeper shoved himself into the room with a gun strapped over his armor, loaded, no doubt. "Thirty seconds," he reminded. There was an irritated tick in his jaw, like he was rolling his eyes or disagreeing. A visor shielded his eyes and hid whatever emotion he had to tell.

Rue's father pressed the girl to his chest, wrapping his arms around her back, and burying his face in her tight black curls. "Rue," he murmured. "I'm always gonna believe in you."

"Ten seconds."

Rue felt dried tears clinging to her face as she pulled from her father's shoulder, curling her fingers in his cotton shirt. "I love you, daddy," was all she could mumble past the thickness of her emotions as she looked into her father's fallen face. His skin was red, as red as it could be under the ebony shade of his roughened skin.

"I love you too, Rue," he told her. Around her torso, his arms grew loose, his warmth grew further away. Rue's fingers slid from his shoulders, and the Peacekeeper stomped into the room, his boots muffled against the carpet. He took her father by the arm with a rough hand and a strong pull. To no prevail, Reid yanked his arms and stomped his tattered boots in an attempt to escape the man's hold.

The light from the hallway illuminated her father's tears, streaming down his stubble-y chin, his neck, as strained grunts escaped his lips. Rue's sobs grew harder, thicker._ "No,"_ she croaked, and Reid twisted in the Peacekeeper's arms, freeing a hand from the man's steel grasp. _"Daddy. Please!"_ His daughter yelled after him.

In a panicked stillness, Rue watched as her father caught the man's jaw in a firm punch, looked on with glassy eyes as the man toppled into the table of mahogany. The room's only light flickered into darkness as the lamp shattered, leaving dangerous fragments of glass strewn over the carpet in a reflective mess. Immediately following the shatter, the sound of a gunshot echoed through the hallway and Rue was only left with enough time to croak out a sob that left her body craning over the loss of energy; the sour pain that struck deep in her stomach. Rue watched with petrified eyes as her father sank to his knees, his body falling forward with a thud that was inaudible under the sheer volume of the wail that coursed through her body.

A Peacekeeper charged into the room, followed by the other, bruised man, and the two of them towered over her as they grabbed her flailing torso. Their arms were rough, cold with the armor. Her footing failed beneath her, and just as something pierced the skin of her thigh, two gloved hands wrenched around her ankles. She lost control of her movements; her speech. In the Peacekeepers' rough hold, her body fell limp.

She listened to the sound of the Peacekeepers' boots fading into oblivion as she drooped in their arms. Beneath her moved polished wood, thundering white boots as the Peacekeepers carried her in their hurry. Sunlight entered Rue's vision in wisps of yellow light, and the very last thing that registered in her mind was the metallic odor of her father's blood, pungent as it drowned in the sour breeze of day.

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**A/N: The main pairing in this story will eventually be Rue/Thresh, but there will be a few others of mild importance, just so you know. If you want a sneak peek of the next chapter, all you have to do is _review._ **


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